Republican Mia Love’s campaign has scaled back on its television advertising in the last few weeks, as measured by gross rating points, while Democrat Ben McAdams is blanketing the airwaves ahead of the 4th Congressional District election.
According to television ad buy data obtained by UtahPolicy.com, McAdams has outspent Love on TV ads in the last three weeks, and will outspend her again this week. The difference in spending between the two campaigns has dramatically increased.
|
Date |
Love TV spending |
McAdams TV spending |
|
August 20-27 |
$0 |
$86,439 |
|
August 28-September 3 |
$211,510 |
$85,257 |
|
September 4-10 |
$189,690 |
$88,463 |
|
September 11-17 |
$74,550 |
$77,558 |
|
September 18-24 |
$106,405 |
$144,963 |
|
September 25-October 1 |
$80,245 |
$193,092 |
|
October 2-8 |
$68,960 |
$182,622 |
|
October 9-15 |
$77,850 |
$236,543 |
Love’s campaign manager, Dave Hansen, tells UtahPolicy.com that the campaign is not backing off on its advertising. He said the campaign was spending more during August and September due to them running a 60-second ad instead of the usual 30-second spot. Now that they’re back to 30-second commercials, their advertising spend has gone down accordingly.
That may be part of it, but a real key is to look at something called gross rating points or GRP, which is a measurement of advertising impact. The more GRP in a particular ad spend, the more frequently an ad is seen. The general rule of thumb is an ad needs approximately 1,000 GRP’s before its message is “fully saturated” in the market. According to Digiday.com, GRP is a “branding metric” to help determine how many people within an intended audience might have seen an ad.
The two weeks the Love campaign ran its 60-second ad highlighting her efforts to free Josh Holt, they purchased 542 and 604 GRP’s respectively. After that, their GRP purchases mostly dropped, while McAdams’ jumped.
|
Date |
Love GRP’s |
McAdams GRP’s |
|
August 20-26 |
0 |
500 |
|
August 28-September 3 |
604 |
500 |
|
September 4-10 |
542 |
500 |
|
September 11-17 |
426 |
500 |
|
September 18-24 |
608 |
800 |
|
September 25-October 1 |
459 |
1000 |
|
October 2-8 |
345 |
1000 |
|
October 9-15 |
389 |
1000 |
Curiously, all of Love’s GRP placements have been on broadcast TV alone, while McAdams has split his ads between broadcast and cable.
It seems odd that Love’s campaign would scale back on the air war, particularly now, in the hotly contested race against McAdams. Ballots start hitting mailboxes this week, so this could be the final chance campaigns have to make their case to voters. As we get closer to election day, there will be fewer and fewer persuadable voters who haven’t yet cast their ballot.
However, the Love campaign is getting some help from the Congressional Leadership Fund, which on Wednesday released an ad attacking McAdams. A press release about the ad said it will run on television and on digital platforms. Politico reported the ad buy was $1 million.
The drop in ad spending from Love may suggest her campaign is having cash flow problems, as advertising is one of the first things that gets cut when money gets tight. Hansen says that’s not the case at all. “We have enough to do what we planned,” said Hansen in an email. However, he declined to share fundraising numbers from the most recent quarter with UtahPolicy.com, saying their fundraising numbers would be made public around the October 15 FEC deadline.
